I only do this for the attention, you know. And any attention is good attention. Unless it’s the physically-violent kind, in which case it’s kinky. I didn’t mean that. Anyway. I have been laboring under the impression that nobody but two or three people - all of whom are considering restraining orders - actually visit this website. Imagine my joy to discover SpoonFighter mentioned on another blog that I didn’t even know existed!

From Jack Of All Blogs, the post entitled “7 Blogs You’ve Never Heard Of”

Wasters of Time

SpoonFighter
This guy has way to much time on his hands. It’s pretty obvious. Worth a read over. It’s dumb And sometimes you need to read something really stupid.

Wait, that’s not very nice, is it? Should I be grateful for the nod, or should I be hurt like a sensitive, Off-Broadway thesbian thespian, withdrawing into my room to gorge myself on rocky-road ice cream and cough syrup until I finally write a pathetic, self-indulgent suicide note without punctuation and then even more pathetically try to slash my wrists with a Gillette Mach 3 razor and wind up in the mental ward for three months?

I’m going to have to think about this. I might be back.

Yeah, I know it’s Wednesday. Shut up.

I haven’t gotten anything quite bad enough to bother posting, until today. Only a single paragraph of a single memo met the stringent standard for a “golden turd” of corp-speak. But it’s a doozy.

The _ _ _ _ _ _ _ project team … will be comprised of full-time, leveraged and extended members, coordinated to deliver results quickly. Given the need for speed of execution, the team will work collaboratively on two primary areas, design and implementation.

Does that actually tell me anything? Let’s break it down.

1. “The … team … will be comprised of full-time, leveraged and extended members”

What exactly is a “leveraged” or “extended” member? Sounds dirty, to me. I’ve heard “leveraged” a lot lately, for everything. We don’t “sell things at low prices” anymore, we “leverage our competitive cost structure.” The other word is an abolute mystery to me. I bet these words would enhance communication with my wife. “Honey, I’d be happy to leverage that jar of peanut butter for you if you’d leverage my extended member.” Smooth like butta’.

2. “… coordinated to deliver results quickly.”

Sounds good, but why don’t you just tell them to deliver results quickly?

3. Given the need for speed of execution, the team will work collaboratively on two primary areas, design and implementation.

So, um, basically, the team is going to work together? And to make sure things get done quickly, they’re going to start projects and finish them? Holy Shit! That’s revolutionary. How has the human race survived without this innovator? I’m glad he’s one of the people with direct access to the CEO. Our company will dominate the market in no time.

According to the 700 Club website, cbn.com, 75-year-old Pat Robertson can leg press 2000 lbs (link). (For comparison, I can leg press 400 lbs and have a hernia at the same time.)

If only he could keep his mouth shut.

New posts on my other blog, hotdogsoup.com .

About my cat.

And the FBI.

This is an oldie-but-goodie which eerily deplicts how decisions get made at my company.
If anyone knows who I should credit, by all means let me know.

In the beginning was the Plan.
And then came the Assumptions.
And the Assumptions were without form.
And the Plan was without substance.
And the darkness was upon the face of the Workers.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have a rule. When I arrive at the office, I get a cup of coffee. If I successfully pour that cup and consume its contents without (a) burning myself, (b) spilling it down my front, or (c) injuring bystanders, then I proceed normally with the rest of my day. If I cannot, however, then I don’t mess with my computers nor attempt anything else that might be risky or expensive.

I have not even made it to the break room for coffee thus far today, but I know how it’s going to go. For my commute, this morning, I put some soda in a sealed sports-drink container, the sort that are supposed to be shock resistant. Within seconds of pulling onto the highway, I noticed that the beverage had escaped from this container and become one with the upholstery of the passenger seat. Food: 1, Me: 0.

As soon as I reached my cubicle, my lunch - a spicy rice-and-chicken curry soup - carried out what I can only describe as a suicide attack. For a nanosecond, the laws of tupperware physics failed and the lid removed itself, filling the interior of my workout bag with spicy, smelly soup. Then, the remaining rice made a break for it and hid itself all over my cubicle. Food: 2, Me: 0.

So now, finally, after spending the first hour of my work day decontaminating my bag, my clothes and my cube, and closing the car window on my running shorts so they can hang out the window and dry in the breeze, I am finally going to go get that coffee. If I don’t come back, tell my wife I loved her.

Trailer Trash Barbie
Source: SamanthaBurns.Com

I wandered smack-dab into another good blog: Less Idiots. I take my hat off to him for his latest post: In a nutshell, he eschews labels like “liberal” and “conservative” and judges each issue individually. I couldn’t agree more. The primary reason I stopped working for the Leadership Institute in DC (and sold out to Corporate America) was that I found myself surrounded by people whose only goals in life were (a) to be ideologically-correct Conservatives, (b) to beat the Liberals, and (c) to find other ideologically-correct Conservatives and sleep with them.

Most everyone (including me) acted like we were engaged in a massive spectator sport between Good and Evil. Everything “Right” was good, and the “Left” was assumed to be a cross between the Oakland Raiders, the Communist Party, and The Empire.

Never mind that Right and Left had far more in common than, say, Left and Commie, or that most of the people we were fighting were people just like us who wanted the best for America.

At least I hope that’s what we wanted. Nobody actually “discussed” what was good for America. That had already been established. Conservative was Good. All that was left to be determined was the correct Conservative stance on any particular issue, so that we could make sure we agreed and know who our enemies were.

I have no doubt that it was the same for the other side. People are people, and this appears to be what we do.

I wish that our politics really were about figuring out the best way to solve our shared problems. Until then, I’m grateful to live under a system of government that allows us to go about fighting our ideological wars without killing each other.

This golden turd of coporate mumbo-jumbo arrived in my inbox this morning. Enjoy:

Translation:

“We’re going to use a different method of charging customers for our software because we think it will make more money and we’ve hired a guy to figure out how do to it.”

My favorite phrase is “leveraging the connected nature of the network.” Using the network to connect to things? What an innovator! If I’d known it could do that, I’d have bought me one. Somebody please tell this guy about the Internet. He’ll love it.

Just when you think Pat Robertson can’t say anything dumber and less Jesus-like, he outdoes himself. If you haven’t heard, here’s a recap. The school board of Dover, PA, has been attempting to include “Intelligent Design” in the science curriculum. The voters responded by electing a new school board this week. Pat Robertson, speaking on his TV show, The 700 Club, had this to say:

I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city…. And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there.

Pat. Please. You’re not helping. Do you really think God speaks to you because you have a TV show? (Do you really think that God cares more about the school curriculum in Dover than he does about the rampant greed and materialism in the whole country?)

Somebody help Pat find the nursing home, please.